13 September, 2016 | Comments Off on McDonald’s Australia Is Adapting Monopoly To Its Latest Mobile Campaign | By TWMG

Are you a board game lover? Here is a great campaign that might fit your geeky hobby.

This week McDonald’s in Australia launched their newly re-imagined Monopoly promotion into a mobile-first gaming experience that converges the digital and physical worlds with an app that scans the ‘peek n reveal’ tickets to unlock unique mobile games, including an AR play.

Featuring a virtual game board, the app stashes gaming tickets onto the virtual board, and helps players keep track of what they still need to win those major prizes in the world’s largest promotion. The stash also doubles as a digital wallet, with players able to swipe-to-redeem prizes in store across the country.

More than third of Australians use smartphone for their ecommerce needs.

Latest research from Nielsen examines Australian Christmas shopping behaviour, especially on the opportunities to reach potential customers as they research and establish buying intentions. Moreover, the research found that during December 2014, almost half (44%) of all Australians with connected mobiles used their phone to search online for gift ideas in the lead up to Christmas. While only 1 in 5 Australians actually purchased items using their mobile device, the report provides concrete evidence of the prevalence of showrooming in the Australian market. The research has revealed that more than third of Australians used their mobile phone for a shopping related activity while in a shopping centre. Among customers who are using a mobile phone in shopping centres, around fourth made online price comparisons, which is a typical showrooming activity.

Other popular activities included taking photos of ideas or items for later purchase and researching items in more detail while still out shopping. Pre-shopping activities also take place in other contexts. According to the report, 24% of respondents in the survey used their commute time to search for the latest deals or research ideas, while 19% researched products to fill idle time when waiting for something.

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Internet marketing experts used to say that the mobile web will be bigger than desktop one in 2015.

And the prediction is correct: mobile web rocks.

So what does this fact means for your business and how can you take advantage of it? If you haven’t thought about it, it’s time to. Most recent study has revealed that by March 2015 the number of mobile-only adult Internet users exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users (which explains why Google thought it’s smart to update its search algorithm to favor mobile-friendly sites in search).

The news triggered the trend of “mobilegeddon,” “mobilepocalyse,” “mopocalypse” or “mobocalypse”. Of course, just because Google carries out an update does not necessarily mean that we have to bend to its will. Yet if you want a snowball’s chance at appearing in Google search, you’ve got to get on board with one of these mobile-friendly choices:

Responsive Web Design (RWD). Google’s preferred option resizes existing site components based on the device calling on the code. This can make it slow if not optimised well.

Adaptive Web Design (AWD). SitePoint explains that AWD works by, “making decisions on the server that determine what should and shouldn’t be sent to the user, so that nothing is sent that will not be used.” This makes it faster than RWD. But it does mean more coding.

M.dot or dedicated mobile site. This is a separate website optimised specifically for mobile – which is great. Except it leaves you with two sites to manage. Some predict m.dot is on its way out of vogue.

Each of these options has its own pros and cons, so you’ve got to weigh them for your business and see which makes sense for you. Just know that you can’t afford to do NOTHING any longer. The difference now is you need to focus specifically on mobile factors. Here are some you may not have thought of:

Redirecting mobile traffic to your mobile website. Though you had a mobile-friendly website, the lack of an automatic redirect will hurt your mobile appearance really, really bad. As a result of this significant oversite, Google deemed the website as “Not Mobile Friendly”, pushing it down the mobile search pages.

Optimising your user experience. Google is using more UX-related factors in search rankings generally, and a good user experience is perhaps even more vital for mobile sites, given smaller screen sizes and variable mobile internet signals.

Local search. This is a big aspect, as 92% of consumers (and still growing) used the internet to find a local business in 2014. A recent Google report noted that Google searches containing ‘near me’ have increased 34 times since 2011.

Bounce rate. Not everyone in SEO agrees bounce rate matters, but it may be a way of Google to use their users as quality testers (pages where people quickly bounce is probably not very good).

Compare mobile keywords to desktop. That’s it. Try to see how you rank for each area and then you can decide “which content to optimise to maximise your traffic.”

Certainly, Google itself offers tips for getting you the rankings you want. When there are even more ranking factors in Google’s sleeve, some of them are really insignificant. Google never take a rest, yet until they announce their next update, do what you can to keep your website at the top position of the mobile battlefield.

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8 December, 2015 | Comments Off on Web Versus Mobile: Three Important Elements To Consider | By TWMG

Over the last decade, a fierce battle has been heated between mobile versus desktop.

Each side has its champions, with voices of opposition who are just as loud. Now, a decade into the divide, we face a fundamental problem: We’re collectively failing as an industry to properly frame the debate to consumers, who may not even understand the distinction between the two options.

First, the fundamental differences: Web apps (built using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript) require a browser and Internet connectivity to run. But mobile apps are typically written in a language that’s specific to an operating system, such as SWIFT for iOS and C# for Windows. Mobile apps also require a native, or on-device distribution mechanism (think, Apple’s AppStore) to load to the device. These “native apps” can run without connectivity, but dynamic functionality requires data exchange via an Internet connection.

These definitive distinctions aside, there are only three things that really matter in the mobile versus Web showdown. Before you start developing your own app, give careful thought to these key differences.

1. RESOURCES

Web apps have been built on the assumption that they’ll be used on a computer plugged into a wall, with abundant resources like power, storage, memory, CPU and bandwidth at its fingertips. The scaled-down footprint of mobile devices, on the other hand, requires smaller computing components.

What does it mean? Mobile apps need to be optimised for power consumption.

The more computing resources constantly used, the more power is required – and constant usage quickly drains the battery. Radio communication to a cell tower also sucks up a lot of energy. And consumers have low tolerance and little patience for a device with a perpetually dead battery. Research shows poor battery life is the biggest shortcoming for smartphone users. Along those same lines, other recent studies have explored which apps are most guilty of killing a phone’s battery life.

Connectivity is also a key point of difference between Web and mobile, as it can impact how and when resources can be used. Wireless networks can be fragile. And historically, they offer less bandwidth than wireline broadband networks. This can be an issue for mobile apps that need to be carefully tuned to use a cellular connection. Plus, mobile devices are sometimes forced to go “offline,” making them unavailable (for example, on an airplane, or in a zone without network coverage), a scenario that Web app users will never encounter.

2. PLATFORM FRAGMENTATION

Supporting the same app across multiple browsers can be a major challenge, because Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari all have slightly different configurations.

A Web app runs on pretty much any combination of chipset, device, OS and browser without any problems. Mobile, unfortunately, is different. There’s so many phones and tablets available in different shapes and sizes, screen resolutions, chipsets and OS versions. Even within iOS, the arguably most homogeneous ecosystem, there are many different types and generations of devices running who-knows-what-version of iOS on one of Apple’s Ax family of chipsets.

On the other side of the fence, it’s not much better: device fragmentation for Android has been a well known fact for a long time. But for mobile, there is fragmentation both within and across ecosystems.

Mobile apps need to be written for iOS, Android and Windows – and three different code bases are needed so the app can run natively on all three platforms. To complicate matters further, what works for one specific version of an operating system desn’t necessarily work for subsequent versions. For example, Apple deprecated some classes with iOS 9, requiring developers to alter their code to have their apps run on iOS 9.

In a nutshell? Mobile requires development and ongoing management of one code base per supported native platform.

And for any app to be relevant and reach a wider audience, it needs to support at least iOS and Android, which according to IDC had a combined market share of over 90 percent of smartphone shipments in Q2 2015.

3. INSTRUMENTATION

One of the strongest arguments for mobile app development is that it gives developers the ability to tap into the rich ecosystem of mobile SDKs. These SDKs provide very mobile-centric or even mobile-only functionality and pieces of information to a developer – he most obvious ones being device name, device type, carrier network and app store metrics, which all only apply to mobile apps.

This instrumentation means mobile apps can do things that Web apps just can’t – like, securing an app or an entire device to prevent theft of personal and business information, or providing tools to edit, compile, test and debug application code, and connect an app to back-end services such as user authentication, data storage, computing and asset hosting.

Unlike Web apps, mobile apps can also scale for reach and audience size, drive up user engagement and retention and measure the ROI on customer acquisition spend. Taking it one step further, these apps can even monetise, generating income from the app and its audience via commerce, payments, subscriptions, ads or usage data.

Legacy Web tools can’t provide these features because they lack the capability to instrument a mobile app to capture the relevant metrics and telemetry from the device.

Web apps can’t leverage the richness of the mobile SDKs, limiting developers’ choice to secure, build, grow, monetise and support their apps.

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26 November, 2015 | Comments Off on Want To Be Successful On Mobile Commerce? Get Responsive Now | By TWMG

This has happened to all of us. Potential buyers decide to shop for something, grab their phone to look it up and suddenly it all goes downhill.

The text is messy, people have to pinch-zoom to click on links, and just getting to the fields to type in address is an exercise in frustration. In the end, people gave up long before getting to the checkout page. Now think about this: Did you ever remember to go back and actually buy that item you were so ready to order on your phone when you have the access to your computer? If it was important enough, you probably found a different site that actually loaded properly on your screen to make the purchase. If it wasn’t, you probably forgot about it altogether. Either way, the site that wasn’t mobile-friendly has lost the sale.

Mobile is the fastest growing retail sales channel today. In fact, more than 30 percent of global e-commerce sales are completed on mobile devices, whether using a smartphone on the go or a tablet while watching TV. Moreover, mobile devices are used at every step of the shopping journey from research to comparison shopping and looking up reviews, sometimes directly from a physical store. The question is, are your offerings competitive in the mobile space?

Creating an entire site dedicated to mobile devices or building an app can be quite cumbersome and seem daunting to all but the largest retailers. That hurdle has kept much of the mid and small market out of the mobile game, yet responsive design has made mobile commerce easier than ever. Using a few best practices, e-commerce sites that look great on any sized screen can be designed one time, ensuring consistency across channels and eliminating duplicate work or complex app development.

Here are a four important things to keep in mind when planning a responsive site:

1. Maximising Mobile Fundamentals

Mobile screens offer as much features as laptop or desktop computers, so you need to plan everything from homepages to product pages and checkouts to display at their best appearances on mobile devices. Though it might be tempting to design a beautiful and complex website and then strip it down for mobile displays, this is the wrong approach. Instead, start with a simple and clean design that looks great on smaller screens and then build it up from there to provide a great experience when scaled up to larger displays. It is much easier to build up from a solid foundation than to try to squeeze an expansive site onto a mobile screen.

2. Sizing At Scale

Every screen and browser should provide as rich an experience as possible, but not stretch the capabilities of the device to compromise usability. This concept, known as “progressive enhancement,” dictates which features are best for various viewing devices and layers them accordingly. Each page contains layout elements that may appear or disappear depending on the size of the screen they are viewed on and the capabilities of the browsers being used. It is vital to understand and plan these behaviors so that content flows smoothly regardless of which features are enabled.

3. Consistent UX

As the display of a website changes changes across devices, core functionality should remain constant. Navigation through product category selection, product photo viewing, checking out and other key experiential elements should be consistent. Even as elements like copy and photos resize according to user display parameters, key assets like the “Add to Cart” button do not have to resize proportionally. In fact, their sizes should be fixed to keep them visible and usable at all times. Identifying page elements that are the most vital to user experience and the sales funnel is key to keeping conversion rates high among devices.

4. Let The Pros Handle It

While easier than developing multiple sites, a solid responsive site requires more expertise than basic HTML. Working with experienced designers well versed in responsive design will ensure that the site is developed properly the first time, preventing frustrating redesigns and overhauls later. This is one of those times where cutting corners almost always proves to be counterproductive.

The importance of tapping into mobile users can not be overstated to retailers, and the time to dive in is now. A quality responsive site will pay dividends for years to come as the devices consumers use to access the Internet continues to evolve.

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20 November, 2015 | Comments Off on Local Business and Mobile Marketing: Why They Need To Care? (Infographic) | By TWMG

Local businesses should be more aware on the power of mobile marketing.

With the percentage of mobile search increasing in such a remarkable way, mobile marketing has become one of the most important factors for even local businesses. Furthermore, having a responsive and mobile friendly layout is vital for driving conversions. Find out why in the infographic below.

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16 November, 2015 | Comments Off on Now You Can Test Your Website’s Mobile-Friendliness With Bing | By TWMG

The pervasive nature of mobile devices demands companies to be aware of the experience they present to users.

There are plenty of mobile testing tools available for net-based businesses on the market today. Google, for instance, has long offered a mobile friendly testing tool and recently Bing has released their own offering.

You might recall that Bing began showing mobile friendly labels in the results a few months ago and even announced it would be rolling out a mobile-friendly algorithm, so the new and free testing tool will likely not come as much of a surprise to industry watchers. That being said, the release of the tool does indicate Bing and Microsoft’s seriousness when it comes to anything and everything mobile. The search engine went into some detail about how pages are determined to be mobile friendly and the criteria it uses including viewport and zoom control configuration, page content width, readability of page text, link spacing and the use of compatible plugins.

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16 November, 2015 | Comments Off on Mobile Marketing Is The Most Favourable Type Of Marketing Among Mothers (Infographic) | By TWMG

If you want to reach the mothers demographic, you’ve got to play right into their smartphone-holding hands.

As the today’s infographic indicates, two out of three moms use mobile “across the entire purchase funnel”—from initial reviewing process to final decision. Mothers use mobile devices to shop from home, but they also use mobile as an essential shopping tool at brick-and-mortar stores—70 percent of moms consult mobile during in-store shopping to compare prices, read reviews, and search for coupons.

What makes mobile so attractive for mothers? First, it goes everywhere they go, letting them stay connected to what’s going on no matter what pressures and responsibilities crowd their plates. Plus, as the infographic suggests, this surge in mobile usage is only going to increase as busy moms take advantage of helpful resources like retailer apps and mobile coupons.

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29 October, 2015 | Comments Off on Is Mobile-Specified Content The Next Trend in Marketing? | By TWMG

Have you ever heard of the term “mobile gap”? Mobile usage is vastly increasing, yet publisher ad revenue isn’t keeping its pace.

At the same time, another gap has opened. This one is between the time that consumers spend on mobile and marketers’ commitment to mobile content. As of last year, mobile is the most-used digital platform. Time spent with digital media on mobile has grown 90 percent in the last two years and in 2015, consumers will watch 39 minutes of video a day on mobile devices.

It’s not that people are abandoning their desktops completely. It’s just that they’re spending significantly more time on mobile apps and the mobile web. As expected, marketers are taking action. Mobile advertising is on the rise, with investments expected to surpass desktop ad spending by the end of the year. Will this issue end soon? In spite of increased mobile activity, many mobile mediums—like games and messaging—present an advertising challenge. Although video ads are proving to be highly engaging on small screens, some marketers still struggle to make a true connection with customers through mobile.

Putting mobile users first

One solution to brands’ mobile problem may be to create more content and, in particular, offer it exclusively through mobile. Brands of all kinds have been experimenting with this tactic in recent months. In July, Doritos launched its first mobile-only campaign, enlisting social media influencers to create 3D videos that are only available to mobile users.

It’s a twist on the mobile-first concept we know, which typically involves brands developing content with mobile user behavior and screen constraints in mind. Rather than create a video and optimise it for mobile devices, these brands are creating fun and interactive content exclusively for mobile users.

Leveraging mobile apps

Mobile technology company Zumobi, which has worked with such brands as CoverGirl, Mercedes-Benz, and Snickers, agrees that the time has come for brands to make mobile content a bigger part of their campaigns. Mobile app usage has increased by 63 percent over the past two years, with consumers now clocking more than 37 hours per month. As of 2014, mobile app usage made up 52 percent of total media engagement. A large portion of this time goes to social networking, gaming, or radio. Facebook and YouTube rank among the top mobile apps in terms of unique visitors. Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus, Snapchat, and Kik all make the top 25.

To reach this sizable audience, Heineken made its new TV spot, which promoted its sponsorship of the upcoming James Bond film Spectre, available to Facebook mobile users first. The brand is also inviting smartphone-carrying consumers to scan limited edition Bond-themed products in-store for a chance to win free movie tickets and access behind-the-scenes video footage.

“Our launch with Facebook mobile allows us to quickly reach and engage with a large and extremely targeted audience, while the 1 in 007 free movie ticket promotion actively drives sales and secures in-store displays for the brand,” Ralph Riis, senior vice president of marketing at Heineken USA, told Mobile Marketer.

To promote the early October finale of Fear the Walking Dead, AMC partnered with T-Mobile and Shazam to give mobile users an exclusive bonus video when they used the music recognition app during the show’s premiere.

When developing content for brand apps, Schimke says marketers don’t need to “reinvent the content wheel.” She does, however, recommend offering a mix of both existing and new content.

Zumobi client Bank of America recently took this approach to promote its sponsorship of the Special Olympics. They filled the Bank of America app with inspiring multimedia stories of Special Olympics athletes, some of which couldn’t be seen anywhere else. “Once a brand has injected all content assets into the app, they can leverage dynamic mobile banners and interstitials to drive traffic back to it,” Schimke explained.

Ultimately, these brands are succeeding by taking a mobile-first approach to their content marketing, and the rest of the industry should follow suit. Internet users have wholeheartedly embraced apps and the mobile web. It’s time for brands to keep pace and close the gap.

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19 October, 2015 | Comments Off on The State of Mobile Commerce 2015 (Infographic) | By TWMG

Mobile marketing spending will pass $100 billion in 2016 to account for over half of all digital advertising.

By 2019, this figure is projected to nearly double to over $195 billion. Mobile device use in the United States and China is driving this growth, with the global smartphone population set to reach 2 billion smartphone users next year, while tablet users will pass 1 billion this year.

The growing demand is changing and reshaping everything from how websites are designed to how payments are processed. To run an effective promotional campaign in today’s economy, it’s imperative to keep up to date with the latest trends in mobile marketing. For more detailed information, take a look at the infographic below.